The Corporation

CHAPTER TWELVE

DESPITE THE FACT that it was three a.m. and Michelle Dowling had dropped off to sleep immediately after laying down in bed at eight-fifteen p.m., she was wide awake when the alarm went off.

She went into the bathroom and quickly brushed her teeth and gargled with Listerine. She applied deodorant and dressed quickly in a pair of blue jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. She ran a brush through her hair, inspected herself in the mirror briefly, then went back into the room and pulled on a pair of white gym socks and put her tennis shoes on. As she dressed, she thought about what happened and what she’d learned from Donald and Jay shortly after she returned to her room after the meeting.

Things had worked out at the meeting as Alan said they would. When they returned from the Ladies Room, Michelle quickly found her seat and sat down, her attention riveted on the presentation which Nick Dowd was still conducting. She barely noticed Alan leaning forward and whispering something in Sam Greenberg’s ear, but she caught a glimpse of her boss’s face as he nodded at what Alan was telling him. A moment later he was giving his undivided attention to Nick’s presentation. That told Michelle he’d bought whatever bullshit story Alan told him. That was good enough for her.

She talked to Donald the moment she got to her room and learned the latest: Crossroads Medical Group had fired him and two other doctors over the Michael Brennan case; he and Jay had gone searching for Michael and later came upon his trailer park and saw two police cars and an ambulance. Donald had gone out and talked to a neighbor woman who said Michael had called 911 and reported a break-in and an assault. Donald and Jay had followed the ambulance to Ephrata General Hospital and Donald was able to speak to Michael briefly. “He was hysterical,” he related to Michelle. “He claimed four guys from Red Rose broke into his house and held him down while one of them gave him an injection of what he claimed was his cancer cells. Lancaster General is running tests on him now and I called Red Rose to find out what the hell was going on. They wouldn’t talk to me, said Michael was no longer covered, either. I spoke to the attending physician and gave him a brief outline of what’s been happening, and he’s promised to monitor Michael’s prognosis.”

“Is he going to die?” Michelle had asked. When she heard Michael was injected with his own cancer cells she’d gasped.

“No,” Donald had said. He’d sounded tired and worried. “At least I don’t think so. We won’t know until the lab tests come back and give us a definite answer on his cancer.”

She was concerned about Michael, whom she’d never met, and even more concerned about how the powers that be—the American Medical Association or whoever it was that governed the Health Care Industry—was going to respond. Donald didn’t know either. While he was at the hospital, Jay had taken the car to retreat away from the limelight and the police. After conferring with various hospital administrators and other physicians, Donald had left the hospital, called Jay on his cell phone, and they’d hightailed it back to the house to come up with a strategy… and that strategy alarmed Michelle.

“Jay insists on us driving out there,” Donald said. “I feel very strongly for it, myself. I left a message with Dr. Brown and told him not to expect me in Monday, that I would call him when I return. Maybe he’ll think I’m out of town to apply for a new position somewhere.”

The conversation ended with Michelle telling Donald and Jay to be careful. “We’ll call when we get there,” Donald said before telling her he loved her and hanging up.

Michelle inspected herself in the mirror one last time, then grabbed her ID, keys, room passkey, and exited her room.

When she reached the lobby, Alan Perkins was waiting for her dressed casually in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt near the double glass doors of the hotel. “This way,” he said.

They stepped into the chilly, Illinois night. “You okay?” Alan asked.

“Fine,” Michelle said. “Anybody else up?”

“They’re out like a light,” Alan said, leading her between parked cars toward the end of the lot. “We still have to be careful, though. No telling how much of a hold they have on this place.”

Michelle glanced around at the parking lot and noticed a security camera directed toward the north end of the lot. Alan was leading her away from that area, but she was certain they’d been caught on another camera somewhere else. She wondered if this was something she had to worry about, and then Alan opened the passenger side door of a white Toyota Camry.

Michelle slid into the passenger seat wordlessly and shut the door. A voice from the back seat spoke and the suddenness of it scared her so bad, she jumped.

“Sorry.” The voice was young, female, and when Michelle turned around and looked in the backseat she caught the curious gaze of a young woman. The young woman was slim, wearing a dark baggy jacket and dark jeans—Michelle couldn’t tell what was on beneath the jacket; the woman had it bundled shut. Her hair was dark, almost shoulder length, and her features were delicate, pretty, yet possessed of an intelligence and cunning that set her apart from most pretty girls Michelle had run across. This woman gave her the impression she was not only street-smart, but book smart, too.

“It’s okay,” Michelle said, feeling her heart race. “You just… I wasn’t expecting you to be there.”

“Michelle,” Alan said, turning around in his seat so he was facing her. He gestured toward the back seat. “This is Rachel Drummond. She’s a member of the Coalition.”

“The what?” Michelle shook Rachel’s hand, still confused and curious and nervous about everything that was happening.

“Slow down, Alan,” Rachel said. “Give her brain some time to process.” Rachel rummaged around in the back seat, pulled out a pack of cigarettes. She held the pack out to Michelle. “Smoke?”

Michelle shook her head. “No.”

Rachel held the pack out to Alan, who took one. Rachel lit his cigarette with a silver butane lighter. She lit her own cigarette from it and they took their first drags. Michelle was restless, not knowing which of them she should be talking to or listening to for that matter. She decided to get the ball rolling by addressing Alan. “Okay, I’ve followed things according to plan. You got me out here. Now tell me what’s going on.”

“Here it is in a nutshell,” Alan said. “Rachel and I are members of an organization called the Coalition. We’re an anti-corporatist organization, and one of our goals is to influence public opinion and distribute information to the public on the growing threat of corporatism.”

“Corpora-what?”

“Corporatism, the new economic system,” Rachel said from the back seat. She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “It’s been around for the past hundred years or so but it’s become stronger in the last thirty… especially the last ten. You want a lesson on it, I’ll be glad to tell you at another time. Right now, Alan needs to give you a brief history lesson on the Coalition and what’s happening so you have a better understanding of why you’re here.”

Alan cut in immediately. “The Coalition’s other goal is to infiltrate companies and government organizations who are embracing corporatism over classic capitalism and determine if they’ve been influenced by Corporate Financial Consultants. If they have, the ultimate goal is to destroy them.”

Michelle looked at Alan. “Destroy them? You mean… what? Blow them up or something?”

“That’s not a bad idea, really,” Rachel said. She took a drag on her cigarette. “Would be hard to do, but it’s certainly crossed our minds.”

Visions of the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, Washington from 1999 came to Michelle. She remembered watching news coverage of the protests, which turned to riots as various anti-World Trade Organization groups clashed with police, counter-demonstrators, and each other. She remembered watching the coverage one night when a bomb scare was called in at one of the main buildings hosting the conference, and a group called the Socialists Union for Workers claimed responsibility. “So you guys are terrorists?”

“No,” Alan said quickly. “We certainly don’t classify ourselves as terrorists. Companies adhering to corporatism may call us that, but we prefer to think of ourselves as good old fashioned freedom fighters.”

“But you encourage violence,” Michelle said, running on her train of thought. “Rachel just said she approved of the bombing of companies who are clients of my employer,” she said this with a sharp tinge of contempt, “and those who practice this corporatism thing… whatever that is.”

“Let me break it down for you,” Alan said. He took a drag on his cigarette. “You’ve been working for large companies either as a consultant or an employee for the better part of fifteen years now, correct?”

“Yeah, I suppose.” Give or take four years when she dropped out of the corporate world briefly to try to make a career out of her art. “Lots of people work for big companies. I also know they’ve become more bottom-line oriented, that workplace atmosphere sucks, that most companies operate from the same bullshit mentality, and that corporate greed is widespread and encouraged by those in upper management. Tell me something I already don’t know.”

“How many hours did you work in a typical week when you first started working right after high school?”

Michelle shrugged. “Forty hours at first, then when I got more into it I worked fifty, sometimes sixty hour weeks on the average, I suppose. Why?”

“What’s your average work day like now?”

“About forty. Sometimes more if I have a deadline.”

“Do you always try to stick to a forty hour work week?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why?”

“Because I have a life.” Michelle glared at Alan and cast her gaze at Rachel, who was listening avidly. “Isn’t that why you decided to rope me into this discussion?”

“Have you noticed any differences between the corporate work-ethic and attitude from when you first started working to now?” Alan asked.

Michelle thought about this before she answered. “I suppose in a way there’s more of that bullshit workaholic mentality. The attitude that you have to stay at the office for twelve hours a day and work weekends. There was some of that when I first started working, but it seems more prevalent now.”

Alan nodded. “Anything else?”

Michelle frowned and thought about it some more, quickly traveling down memory lane. “I’ve noticed less company loyalty toward their employees and vice versa. Benefits packages being cut, CEO salaries going higher, wages remaining stagnant while inflation rises. But that’s happening everywhere.”

“Anything else you can think of?” Rachel asked from the back-seat. “Anything in the range of personal development issues or Human Resources stuff?”

“No,” Michelle said, suddenly stopping herself in mid-sentence as a thought came to her. “Well, actually I have noticed disapproval of taking time off. You know… vacations and stuff. Calling in sick. That kind of thing.”

Rachel and Alan nodded. “Go on,” Alan prodded.

“What does this have to do with—”

“It has a lot to do with what we’re up against,” Alan said, his features grim.

Michelle regarded them both, hoping to see if there was just the slightest chance—just the slightest—that they were mad. There wasn’t. She could read it in their faces, in their eyes. They were dead serious and that made her nervous. “I don’t know,” she said, her breath coming out in a whoosh. “There’s so much emphasis now on… devoting yourself to the company you work for, being loyal to them and identifying yourself with them, and you don’t get much in return. It used to be that you could get a good position with a good company and stay there forever. Your job might not always be secure, but your position with the company always was if you were a good employee. If there were cutbacks, they tried to find a way to keep you employed somehow. Those days seem to be gone.”

Alan nodded, and when she was finished he leveled his gaze at her. “You don’t know much about my background, or Rachel’s for that matter. Rachel’s history is similar to yours.” He turned to Rachel. “Care to indulge her?”

“I barely knew my parents,” Rachel said, addressing Michelle directly. “I’m only twenty-five; my mom was twenty-three when she got pregnant with me. She was working for a huge financial planning firm in Chicago and met my father there. He took off when he learned my mom was pregnant, so I never met my natural father. According to my research, my mom was normal during the first three or four years of my life. I barely remember her; all I get are images, brief snapshots or five minute movie reels in my head of when she was my mother. My real mother.” There was a sense of loss in her voice, a heart-breaking sense of sadness that reminded Michelle of her own losses—the lack of her parents love and attention, the loss of Alanis. “When I was four she went through a management training program in an attempt to rise through the ranks at work so she could better provide for me. That’s when she stopped being my mom—she became more absorbed in work. She stopped paying attention to me, was hardly around when I was growing up. She met a guy at work and he moved in with us. He was just like her; very driven, very into his work. They always brought their work home, and I was mostly raised by my grandparents and my uncle Stephen and his wife Shelly. My mom and her boyfriend, whom she later married, provided food and a roof over my head, but that was it. She… acted like a mother whenever she had to show up for a parent-teacher conference or something, but she wasn’t my mother. She started changing drastically when I was five, and by the time I was ten she wasn’t the same woman. The more I tried to remember her from before she changed, the more that image started slipping away. It got to the point that by the time I was in Junior High, I didn’t realize my mother had once been a vibrant person.”

Rachel dragged on her cigarette. “To make a long story short, I was extremely rebellious as a teenager. I got sent to Juvie and later graduated from high school through a GED program. I went to tech school to become an html programmer and got a job working at the same company my mother worked at. Weird coincidence, huh? I tried establishing a relationship with her and for a while I thought it might work. We had something in common now—we worked for the same employer—but whenever I tried to arrange mother-daughter things, my mom always had an excuse, and it always involved work. She just wouldn’t take the time to relax and enjoy the finer things in life. I asked her once why she worked so much, why didn’t she take a vacation or something, and she said, ‘Why would I want to take a vacation? This is what I do.’

“Anyway, that’s when I noticed differences at work. That some people were exactly like my mother and others were more normal, more… you know… they did their jobs, then they went home and had a life. I started noticing this more and more at other companies—I went through five jobs from the time I got my technical school training done till I finally dropped out of the corporate rat race—and I got interested in learning about these people’s lives. I’d always had a diary, so I started jotting down my observations, people’s names, where they worked, what their personalities were like. One day I compared everything.” Rachel fixed Michelle with an intent stare. “And what I found was that twenty percent of all the people at the companies I worked at were exactly like my parents. And that Corporate Financial Consulting was always in some way involved with my employer.”

This is the worst conspiracy theory I’ve ever heard, Michelle thought. “What about other consulting firms? Deloitte and Touche? Ingram Micro? Surely they were doing business with your employers as well?”

“Not all of them, and not all at the same time,” Rachel said. “Deloitte and Touche was only brought in by two of my employers for some short-term project. Ingram Micro I never worked with. There was one firm—I can’t remember their name—but they were involved on a long-term project with one company I was at. Corporate Financial was working with all five of my employers during my stints with them. I even got to see it first hand.”

“See what first hand?”

“How they get you.” Rachel smoked her cigarette down to the filter and stubbed the butt out in an ashtray set along the back panel of the island between the front bucket seats. “They were brought in at Graham Electronics, the last company I was at, for five months after I started. Graham was a great place to work when I started. Of all the companies I was at, there was less bullshit at that one, even among the executives. They were all very cool, very down to earth, very great to work with. Sure, there were some people there who were all gung-ho for the company and who brown-nosed certain higher-ups, but you’ll get that anywhere, in any social situation. Two months after Corporate Financial started doing some work for them, it got worse. A glass ceiling seemed to appear beneath the upper management level seemingly overnight. Certain middle-managers became more company oriented, less friendly, more… dedicated I guess you might say. I noticed the change immediately; I didn’t just roll off the tomato cart yesterday. I sort of hunkered down in my cubicle, did my work as I was told, and observed. And what I saw was pretty scary.”

“And what was so scary?” Michelle asked.

“By my count, ten percent of the people I knew at Graham turned into corporate zombies. Literally. The change was gradual—so gradual that the casual observer wouldn’t recognize it. I’d been seeing the signs the last five years, though, and I paid attention. People I used to talk to at breaks and lunches about anything in the world now only wanted to talk about work. One of my friends, a woman named Carol Williams, used to tell me about her husband and her child all the time. We talked about movies, books, music, stuff on the news. She was very cool. We did our work, talked about office politics and our work in general, but it was never obsessive. Carol got obsessive, though. I asked about her daughter once and Carol looked at me as if she didn’t know what I was talking about. When I pressed her there was this light in her eyes that seemed to suddenly turn on, as if a switch was being thrown. She gave me a very basic answer and that was it; that was not like her. She could gab for hours about her daughter, but on this day she just answered the question and then asked me about the project I was working on.”

“Maybe she was under some kind of stress related to her job,” Michelle suggested. “Maybe she had problems at home.”

“That’s what I thought at first,” Rachel said. She leaned forward. “But I asked her point blank—‘Carol, what the hell’s wrong? You okay?’ And she… she reacted real slowly, as if she didn’t know how to respond to such a personal question. It was creepy… like watching a puppet being pulled by a marionette’s strings. Or a very slow robot with a slow processor.”

Michelle thought about Jay’s description of Dennis Harrington when he stumbled upon him in his motel room and shuddered.

“Basically topics we used to talk about were now off limits,” Rachel continued. “The people I used to like, that I used to think of fondly, started neglecting their families, their interests outside of work. They were still at work when I left at the end of the day and they were in the office when I came in at 7:30. I went through my notes, observed patterns, and called some of my old co-workers at previous jobs, ones I knew I could trust. Some of them had left their jobs and were working elsewhere. I asked them certain things and they verified stuff I needed to know. Namely, how the climate and certain people around them had changed drastically. That’s when I knew.”

“Knew what?” Michelle said, some of her bravado creeping in. “That your mind was playing tricks on you? That you were getting a little too paranoid?”

Rachel ignored the barb and fixed Michelle with a stare that was direct and uncompromising. “My boss changed overnight from a woman full of laughter and humor and a love for life into this chainsaw Nazi bitch who would not engage you in conversation about anything other than work. She was a good manager, was serious about her work, knew her job and the industry inside and out and could talk about it when it was time to do business, but you could talk to her about anything else too: family, baseball, what it’s like to go body surfing in Hawaii… anything.” Rachel paused. “When she changed, she wouldn’t even consider topics outside of work during conversation. She changed so drastically, did a complete one-eighty turn, that it stunned me. I hunkered in my cube for the next day and just observed what was going on. The girl a few cubes down from me got hit next, and I started noticing a change in Bernie, our department Analyst, the next morning. I wrote up my resignation letter that day at noon, got my stuff and left. I haven’t worked at a large corporation since then.”

Michelle was just about to ask, so what do you do to make money to survive?, when headlights from a car stabbed into the murky blackness of the parking lot. Alan reached out and pushed Michelle down into the seat. “Down!” Michelle ducked. Rachel flattened herself into the backseat and Michelle tried to stay below the dashboard. Her heart was hammering. For a moment she couldn’t hear anything, but then the sound of a car slowly cruising the lot came to her ears. She couldn’t see the headlights, but she could see the shift and change of the shadows they created from her position while hunkered in the front seat to know somebody was driving around out there. “What’s going on?” she whispered.

Alan didn’t say anything at first. He was sprawled out, legs beneath the dash, his upper body contorted over the driver’s seat of the car. He was peeking out cautiously over the rim of the bottom of the driver’s side window. “Hold on,” he said. “We just need to see if this is a legitimate guest at the hotel, that’s all.”

Michelle almost said, why wouldn’t it be? Now was not the time to start questioning what was going on and cause a rift. There was something wrong; she knew it, had known it since early this week when she’d started feeling uneasy around Dennis Harrington and Alma Smith, and learned Jay O’Rourke had been fired from Building Products. The feeling had intensified over the past twenty-four hours. Now was definitely not the time to start acting like one of those stubborn characters you see in horror movies, the ones who refuse to believe something is happening when all evidence points to the fact that, yes indeed, some weird shit is going down.

“What are they doing?” Rachel asked from the backseat.

“Hold on,” Alan said. Pause. “The car just parked and turned off the lights. Hold it…”

Michelle felt a cramp hit her leg and she tried shifting her weight around. No good.

“He’s getting out and heading to the hotel,” Alan said. He straightened up and eased back into his seat. Rachel sat up and Michelle crawled out from her space in the front bucket seat. Her leg tingled from the cramp. “Sorry about that,” he said. “But we’ve got to be careful.”

“Who do you think it could have been?” Michelle asked.

“Somebody from Corporate Financial doing a sweep of the lot,” Alan said. He watched the figure retreat into the lobby dragging a suitcase behind him. “They’ve been known to do that.”

“Snoop around parking lots?”

Alan turned to her. “Yes. Especially when Corporate Financial is doing business at a conference or something. They like to monitor everything around them as much as possible.”

“Do you think they’re on to us?” Michelle asked, suddenly thinking about Sam Greenberg and wondering if he was starting to suspect she wasn’t the cut-to-the-mold corporate drone she’d built herself up to be during her interview.

“I don’t think so but you never can tell,” Alan said. “They are aware of the Coalition, though. I wouldn’t put it past them to be suspicious.”

“If they’re aware of the Coalition, how can you be sure they’re not aware of you?” Michelle asked.

“I’m not,” Alan said. He checked the parking lot out in the rear and side view mirrors as he talked. “But like I said, they know something’s up, and they know about the group. One of our members was found murdered two months ago in his home in Seattle. The member in question had penetrated one of Corporate Financial’s biggest clients. He was feeding us good information, so good that we got a very good map of their corporate structure and the names of their higher personnel. Believe it or not, that information is pretty top secret. Not even Corporate Financial underlings know who really runs the company.”

“A guy named Gary Lawrence is one of their VPs,” Michelle said. “He’s very high up in the company. The president is a guy named Frank Marstein. One of the other VPs is a Linda Harris. I’ve never met any of them except for Gary Lawrence, and he seemed very normal. Very… well, unlike the others.”

Alan nodded. “Lawrence is quite frightening. He can put on a good front. He certainly had me thinking he wasn’t like the others, but he is. The guy I just told you about that was found murdered… that was his mission, to determine Lawrence’s true nature. That’s what killed him.”

Michelle felt the chill settle over her. “So… what did he find out? And how—”

“How’d he die?” Alan finished for her. “Police are attributing it to a break-in, that he’d surprised a burglar. Official cause of death was strangulation. It was closed quickly. Want to know why?”

Michelle was afraid to ask but she did anyway. “Sure. What else have I got to lose?”

“There was really no sign of a break-in—no picked locks, no smashed windows, no sign of a struggle. No suspicious fingerprints were found. But he was definitely strangled; the physical signs showed it. And there was another thing.” Alan regarded Michelle seriously. “His neck and face were coated in substance the coroner and medical examiners couldn’t identify. One of our members talked to somebody at the morgue and they said the stuff was almost like slime. Or grease.”

Michelle didn’t know what to say. What did this mean? Before she could ask this question Alan answered it for her. “I don’t know what this means specifically but I have my speculations.”

“And that is?”

“First, you need to know more about Corporate Financial Consultants,” Alan said. “You know what they told you during orientation, right?”

Michelle nodded. Company literature revealed the company was founded in 1938 in Westchester County, New York by two businessmen, Zachary Tyler and Hubert Marnstein. They operated out of a small office, then moved to more prominent real-estate in Manhattan in 1943. By 1950 they had offices in Chicago, Atlanta, Houston, and Los Angeles. Their original goal was to help businesses of all kinds find ways to run their operations more smoothly and efficiently. Originally specializing in Accounting Services, the firm began adding various other consulting tasks to their enterprise—Business Administration, Customer Service, Marketing and Advertising, Data Entry and Computer Technology, and Human Resources. They were now the largest privately held corporate consulting firm in the country and in the process of establishing operations in Europe, Japan, and South America.

“They didn’t tell you Tyler and Marstein were strict anti-communists,” Alan said. “That they left the John Birch Society in 1936 because they felt that group was too liberal and formed their own organization.”

“No!” Michelle said.

“Both of them were alarmed at what they felt was the rising tide of socialism in this country,” Alan continued. “They felt Roosevelt’s New Deal, the rising tide of labor unions and the like, was going to carry this country toward full-fledged communism. A lot of people felt that way then; lots of conservatives feel that way now, that things like Social Security and the like are a form of Marxism. We can argue about the merits or validity of those views, but the point of this history lesson is this: Tyler and Marstein were greedy businessmen who would do anything to earn money, even if it meant taking advantage of natural resources and people if they had to do it. Tyler’s grandfather was a plantation owner who’d owned over fifty slaves before the Civil War. Marstein’s family had owned shares in a Railroad company that enslaved Chinese immigrants and Native Americans; they also employed child laborers.”

Rachel cut in. “To make a long story short, their business policy then and now was to retain a two percent stake in every company they took on as clients. Add that up over the years; over a thousand Fortune 500 corporations have retained the services of Corporate Financial over the decades. Two percent of that kind of money adds up to a shit load.”

Michelle nodded, running the figures in her head. “Jesus!”

“Over time they began buying major shares in their client’s companies,” Alan said. “They formed a dummy corporation; this same dummy corporation owns major shares in a very large portion of today’s biggest companies.”

“But that’s…” Michelle sputtered.

“Deception? Yeah, it’s that and a lot more,” Alan said.

“Their ultimate goal is to be not only the dominant corporate power in the country, but the world,” Rachel said. She drew another cigarette from the pockets of her coat and lit it. “By applying their methods of operation to their client companies, the more the client produces, the quicker profits are funneled up to Corporate Financial and its dummy company. Think of Corporate Financial as being a giant leech. It establishes links—tentacles, if you will—all over the corporate sector. It inserts their employees in this company, establishes their… methods so to speak, and the client begins employing these methods by fair means and foul. Upper management is quick to go along with this because it means larger profits, which translate to bigger salary increases and bonuses for them.”

“This is…” Insane was the word that popped into Michelle’s mind. Paranoid was another. But part of her whispered, what if this is true?

“You saw the behavior today at the meeting,” Alan said, directly addressing Michelle. “How attentive everybody was, how obsessive, how wholly focused they were on the meeting and nothing else. That’s one of Corporate Financial’s methods. They work into you, insinuating themselves into you so that you begin to think and behave like them. It’s like they take control of your thoughts and your life. You become a literal corporate zombie, your only purpose to live is to work for the company’s goals. Your own goals and interests and life become forgotten.”

“But I don’t understand!” Michelle said, trying to puzzle this out, confused and scared about what she was thinking. “You’re suggesting something… impossible!” Jay O’Rourke’s statement to her last week at the Lone Star kept circling her mind. They’re like something out of that Jack Finney novel Invasion of the Body Snatchers. She refused to believe that.

Alan must have read what was on Michelle’s mind. “Remember Jay’s little verbal spat with Barb at the Lone Star last week?”

Michelle nodded.

“Barb Shull wasn’t the emotionless drone she seemed that night when I first met her a year ago,” Alan continued. “Jay even admitted that to me a few weeks ago. She was always a very career-driven person; one could certainly characterize her as a workaholic. But she totally changed a year ago. Trust me, I saw the change. If you thought she was a corporate drone last week, you would have thought she was a sweetheart a year ago. And back then her employees didn’t think much of her. Now they absolutely loathe her.”

“So you’re saying she became possessed somehow?”

“Possessed is a weak word. I prefer the term hijacked. Taken over.”

“Don’t they mean the same thing?”

“She’s got it right,” Rachel said. She drew on her cigarette. “Especially in light of what we’ve found out in the past two years or so.”

“Hmm, yes, I think you’re right.” Alan motioned to Rachel for a cigarette, which she passed to him. She lit it for him with her lighter.

“What are you talking about?” Michelle asked. She wished they would stop beating around the goddamn bush and just lay it all out.

Rachel Drummond and Alan Perkins traded a glance. Alan looked a little uncomfortable. Rachel drew on her cigarette, her attention focused completely on Michelle. “Take this for what you will… but Tyler and Marstein’s family were involved in the original incarnation of Corporate Financial. Marstein’s family has an interesting history. They’re from Germany; one of his cousins was a member of the SS. Hubert himself wasn’t a Nazi sympathizer, but he took a keen interest in some of the artifacts his cousin Joseph Marstein amassed during the mid-thirties. You see, Joseph was a devil-worshipper. That’s the only term I can use to describe him. Not an occultist, not a witch, a devil-worshipper. And the material he collected while he was a member of the SS was a cache of rare occult volumes, books on black magic and the like. Joseph was killed in 1942, and Herb sought to have his cousin’s belongings brought to the United States. They finally were, in 1945 by a family member who served in the US Army. Hubert stashed the material away and delved into it more fully. I guess you could say Hubert shared his cousin’s faith.”

Michelle didn’t know what to say. She could only listen, spell-bound.

Rachel drew on her cigarette and tapped ashes in the ashtray. “Marstein’s son began to take on a larger role in the family business as the years went by, and when old man Hubert died in 1968, Frank took over as President and Chairman of the Board. By this time he was living in northern California, in the high Sierras, and he maintained offices in San Francisco. He was also well-known in occult circles in the Bay Area to be a very powerful member of a secret satanic organization, one with ties to some pretty sinister groups—the Children of the Night, the Order of the Golden Dawn, groups like that. When he took control of Corporate Financial, the company’s growth began to accelerate drastically. By 1980 they were the largest private consulting firm in the country. Their methods began to slowly creep into the standard everyday practices of corporations across the country, and by the mid-eighties their Human Resources division was beginning to be embraced by their core clients. Ten years later, these methods were widespread, and today they’re spreading faster than you would like to believe.”

“What are these methods?” Michelle asked.

“Complete subservience to the corporate cause of your employer in order to feed it and Corporate Financial.”

“But how does that happen!” Michelle was trying to understand what Rachel and Alan were telling her but she was having a hard time with it. In a way, she did understand some of what they were saying. So many people did what their employers told them to do, no questions asked. Other people (a lot of people, really) had no sense of self-worth or identity and became subservient to their employer as a way of feeling good about themselves. Michelle had never been like this, even when she was working for All Nation. “I understand a lot of people don’t have a mind of their own and—”

“That’s how they do it,” Alan said quickly. “The first converts are those who can’t think outside the box. They target the emotionally weak and vulnerable, those with no sense of self-worth or identity. They also use methods of psychological warfare to get those that are more strong-willed—they’ll spy on employees, keep track of their personal life, find a way to blackmail them.”

“How can they do that? They can’t spy on people!”

“Yes they can.” Alan took a drag on his cigarette. “The Fourth Amendment protects individuals against the government. It doesn’t protect them against other individuals, especially individuals who form a corporate governing body. In the late 1800’s, Congress made various rulings that, in essence, defined corporations. Corporations were given the same rights and status as people, with all the same legal rights as you or I. To make a long story short, after the Civil War, the thirteenth through the fifteenth amendments were ratified to provide full constitutional protections and due process of law to the newly freed slaves in the United States. At the same time, there was a movement against Paine and Jefferson’s rulings almost a hundred years earlier that severely regulated corporations. States had made it illegal for corporations to participate in the political process, made it illegal to lie about their products, and required their books and processes always be open and available to government regulators. They also made laws that gave State and Federal government officials rights to inspect companies and investigate them when they caused pollution, harmed workers, or created hazards for communities. Needless to say, those laws were a constant thorn in the side of many corporations, and with the passage of the 14^th amendment, the owners of what were then America’s largest and most powerful corporations—the railroads—figured they’d finally found a way to reverse Paine’s logic and no longer have to answer to ‘we, the people’.”

Alan paused, his eyes seeming to seek a reaction from Michelle, then he went on. “They would claim a corporation is a person. They would claim that for legal purposes, the certificate of incorporation declares the legal birth of a new person, who should have the full protections the voters have under the bill of rights. Attorneys for railroads filed suits against local and state governments on the issue. This went on for over twenty years, and they hammered the same issue. Finally, four different cases reached the Supreme Court in 1886 when a Recorder of the court wrote into his personal commentary of the case that the Chief Justice said that all the Justices agreed that corporations are persons. This was clearly a clerical error on the Recorder’s part. This headnote had no legal standing, yet it was taken by generations of jurists, including the Supreme Court, who followed and read the headnote but not the decision. The ironic thing about this is the Recorder in this case knew the Court had not ruled on this issue. Since then, Corporations have used this case—Santa Clara County vs. The Union Pacific Railroad—to press their cause further and as a result, these non-living, non-breathing persons are now fully entitled to the full protections that shield people against abuse from government.”

Michelle sputtered. “That’s—” Insane was the first word that popped into her mind.

“A few of the largest corporations referenced Santa Clara and successfully claimed the protection of the First Amendment, then lobbied Congress and the FCC so they could take control of our media. Once that was done, they claimed their First Amendment free speech rights to tell us whatever serves their interest and call it news without consideration of its truthfulness or having to worry about giving fair and equal time to other viewpoints. They claim the protection of the Fourth Amendment so they can prevent the EPA and OSHA from inspecting factories or environmental or labor violations without first obtaining the corporation’s permission. They also now have the protection of the Fifth Amendment, and the Fourteenth Amendment. Companies can delve into your personal records, monitor your private email—even from ISPs you maintain outside of work—dig up a lot of information about you that does not relate to your job and they can do it legally.”

“Furthermore, they’ll play hardball with you,” Rachel said. “They’ll threaten your loved ones, mess up your financial records, do anything to get you to toe the line.”

“But that’s harassment!” Michelle protested.

“And they’re very good at it,” Alan said. He regarded her calmly. “Look at it this way. You’re strong-willed, very independent, can think for yourself. Suppose you were a single mother and left your child at a combined school/day care center during the day while you worked. The daycare in question closes at six and you’re always able to get your child by five-thirty. Ninety percent of all employers realize their employees have children and must make arrangements for child care, plus most employers operate from eight to five anyway. Now suppose you’re suddenly told that your workload or your projects are so important that you have to stay at the office until your tasks are done for the day, even if it means missing the deadline for picking your child up. You know you can’t do that: the daycare center will dock you five dollars for every minute you’re late. And you don’t want to do that anyway; your child will grow worried that you haven’t picked him or her up, they’ll get very upset. So you do what any parent will do who puts their child first, and you leave when you usually leave. Maybe you leave a little late, but you still make sure you have enough time to get your child. Only your employer doesn’t like this. They start guilt-tripping you, questioning your loyalty to your job and your profession. You stand your ground. Later that day, they tell you some very personal things about your child, things only you can know. This is delivered as a veiled threat, that if you don’t toe the line at work, your child will be hurt or killed.”

“That’s when it would stop,” Michelle said, the thought of this scenario chilling her blood. “I’d tell them to fuck off and walk out of there.”

“That’s what you would do,” Alan said. “But there are people in different situations that wouldn’t do that at first. Maybe they’d be under financial pressure, scared to do anything. Some might try to fight back, but they’d be dealt with severely.”

“You make these people sound like the mob,” Michelle said.

“That’s because they behave that way,” Alan said. “I’m not saying they are the mob, but they employ those same methods.”

“But why would they do this? Companies that would treat their employees that way are only going to lose them and—”

“They treat their employees that way because they can,” Rachel said. She took a drag on her cigarette, her features stern. “That’s what we’re trying to get through to you. They can do this because they’ve been doing it time and time again. They don’t give a shit about the people who work for them. Their entire goal, their mission, is to make as much money as possible. When they first started such strong-arm tactics, there were people just like you that filed grievances, got lawyers and sued them, the whole nine yards. The courts always sided with the company, especially if it was a company with Corporate Financial on their side.”

“You mentioned earlier that you admit that working conditions in this country are growing worse,” Alan said. He glanced casually out at the parking lot as he spoke. “Longer hours, companies having less loyalty to their employees, drastic reduction of benefits. It’s been happening very gradually since 1980. And it’s been happening gradually to slowly acclimate the American Worker to this state. Prior to 1980, most employees in office jobs worked seven and a half hours and enjoyed a forty-five minute lunch break—a lunch break that was paid for, I might add. Now what’s the norm? Eight hour workdays minimum, an hour for lunch unpaid. Most people are putting in nine, ten, and twelve hour workdays, if not more. These longer workdays have become more common, and it’s been happening gradually. People in Germany and France work fewer hours than us and they’re more efficient.”

“And companies there have long promoted shorter working hours and more vacation days,” Rachel said. “They realize that a healthy, happy employee is a more productive employee.”

“They’re less apt to call in sick, there’s less turn-over, the burnout rate is much lower, and people do tend to be more productive when they’re not so stressed out,” Alan stated.

“That’s all changing over there, too,” Rachel said. She took a final drag on her cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray. “Corporate Financial has become global during the last ten years. They’re starting to change the way business is being run all over the world.”

“And they’re doing this simply because they want to be the dominant Corporate force in the world,” Michelle said, musing over everything Alan and Rachel had been telling her.

“You see how this is all taking place now, don’t you?” Alan asked. “How they’ve influenced our work structure, our government?”

“I guess,” Michelle said; she was still having a hard time believing it but, crazy as it sounded, it was all adding up.

“If it keeps up, pretty soon independent business will cease to exist,” Alan said. “Corporate Financial will keep swallowing company after company. Their influence will work its way into everybody who works for the companies they do business with. People who work for them will become slaves in the literal sense—they will only exist for the company they work for.”

“And the bigger they get, the stronger they’ll get,” Michelle said, running the figures and scenarios in her head and suddenly not liking it. She was connecting the dots now—the FCCs gradual relaxation of the rules in regulating competition among competitors, allowing rival companies to swallow the competition in buyouts, the drive to eliminate benefits in order to drive down costs, sending jobs overseas to drive down costs; and the result was those who pulled the strings getting richer and richer at the expense of the workers who poured their livelihood into their chosen trade.

“You see now,” Rachel said. She was looking at Michelle in a new light and Michelle realized the younger woman could tell she and Alan had gotten through to her.

“Yes, I do,” Michelle said, the implications so clear and terrifying now. “The bigger they get, the more power they’ll yield over everybody, especially thanks to all the deregulation. In fact, they probably already have control of the government.”

“Not completely, but it’s getting there,” Alan murmured.

“What happens if they succeed?” Michelle asked.

“At the rate things are going,” Alan said seriously, his features grave, tired. “We could see the global enslavement of the human race.”